Chapter 1 #2
My hands want to move, to adjust my cuffs, to do something, anything to discharge the tension building in my shoulders.
I force them to stay clasped behind my back.
But my jaw tightens. My pulse pounds in my throat.
I've stopped talking mid-sentence, the thread of negotiation completely lost because a woman in a red bikini has somehow short-circuited twenty-five years of iron discipline.
This is unacceptable.
"Maksim?" Alexei's voice cuts through the haze. I've been silent too long.
I clear my throat. Force my gaze away from the window with more effort than it should require. Back to Arthur, who's watching me with renewed hope, like he's just realized he might have an asset after all.
"The alliance," I say, my voice rougher than before, and I despise the crack in my composure. "An exchange of assets. The Severyn name needs legitimacy. The Ainsley name needs protection. Marriage provides both."
Arthur's fingers drum against his desk, a nervous pattern that betrays his thoughts before he opens his mouth. "Victoria is... she can be difficult. Strong-willed. She may require some persuasion."
Difficult. Strong-willed.
The words should concern me. Instead, hunger sharpens in my chest like a blade being whetted against stone.
"Has she been informed of the arrangement?" Zakhar asks from his position by the door. Always practical. Always thinking three moves ahead.
"Not yet," Arthur admits, and there's shame in his voice, thin and bitter. "I thought it best to finalize details first."
Coward. Selling his daughter and too weak to even tell her to her face. The contempt I feel is clean and uncomplicated. This is what happens when men choose comfort over strength. They rot from the inside until there's nothing left but the performance of power.
My gaze drifts back to the window against my will. Victoria hasn't moved, still floating, still oblivious to the deal being struck in her name. She looks peaceful. Content. Completely unaware that her father is negotiating her future like she's livestock.
The wrongness of it registers somewhere beneath my calculated detachment. I push it aside. Sentiment is a luxury I can't afford, and this arrangement serves my purposes. Her comfort is not my concern.
"There's no time like the present," I hear myself say. "She doesn't appear busy. Let's conclude this now."
Arthur blinks. "Now? But I thought—"
"You thought wrong." I turn from the window and pin him with the look that makes grown men reconsider their life choices. The look that says I've killed for less. "Call her in."
He hesitates. Weighs his options. Realizes he doesn't have any.
With a defeated sigh, he presses the intercom button on his desk phone.
"Elise? Please fetch Victoria from the pool. Tell her I need to speak with her in my office immediately."
Through the window, I watch the maid approach the pool. Victoria sits up on the raft when she sees her, movement fluid and unhurried. Even from this distance, I can see her smile. Warm, genuine, transforming her face from beautiful to devastating. The kind of smile that makes men stupid.
The smile dies the moment the maid speaks.
Victoria's head turns toward the window. Toward me. She reaches up and uses her middle finger to slide her sunglasses down her nose. Holds it there long enough that there's no mistaking the message.
Fuck you.
A challenge. A declaration of war before the first shot's even been fired.
This woman is going to be trouble.
The thought should concern me. Instead, anticipation cuts through my chest, sharp and clean as a knife finding the space between ribs.
Victoria says something to the maid that makes the older woman's shoulders shake with laughter before she turns away. Then Victoria slips off the raft with a grace that shouldn't be possible, and I watch her swim to the stairs.
Water streams off her body as she climbs out. Each step reveals more. The curve of her hips, the dip of her waist, the sway of her ass as she walks toward the house. She knows I'm watching. She's doing this deliberately, taking her time, making me wait.
Dangerous. Calculated. Exactly the kind of woman who could ruin me if I let her.
Zakhar is saying something about the Albanians, about contingency plans, about timelines.
I hear the words but they're just noise, static in the background of my narrowed focus.
My attention has collapsed to a single point: the woman walking through her own house like a queen approaching her execution, head high, shoulders back, refusing to hurry for anyone.
I reach for my cufflinks. Realize they're already perfect. Force my hands to my sides before anyone notices.
Discipline. Restraint. Focus.
A knock at the door.
"Come in," Arthur calls, voice tight with apprehension.
The door opens.
Victoria Ainsley enters her father's office dripping pool water onto expensive carpet, and the temperature in the room shifts.
She's thrown a sheer white cover-up over her bikini, soaking wet, clinging to every curve, somehow more provocative than nudity.
Her dark hair hangs in wet ropes down her back.
Drops of water slide down her neck, trace her collarbone, disappear into the valley between her breasts.
The office goes silent. Even the air seems to still.
Zakhar, disciplined and unflappable Zakhar, has gone motionless. Alexei's perpetual grin has frozen on his face, and I can see the exact moment hunger registers in his eyes.
Victoria's gaze sweeps the room, assessing each of us with the cool calculation of someone who's learned to read danger. When her eyes land on me, electricity arcs between us.
Her mouth curves. Not quite a smile. Something sharper.
"You wanted to see me, Father?" Her voice is silk wrapped around a blade. Cultured. Controlled. Utterly unimpressed by the three dangerous men currently occupying her father's office.
Alexei breaks first.
"Pizdets."
The word hangs in the air, Russian profanity somewhere between holy shit and we're fucked, and it's the most honest thing anyone's said since we walked through the door.
Victoria's smile sharpens into something that could draw blood.
And I know, with absolute certainty, that this arrangement is going to cost me far more than I calculated.